The interface is clean and simple, focusing on the email in your inbox. The sidebar and title bars are slim and clutter-free, and even the ads are grey and unobtrusive. Opening an email brings up a very Gmail-like conversation view, you can quickly create labels for any type of message, search using a number of different filters and operators, and navigate the interface with a host of keyboard shortcuts. If you don't like the default shortcuts, you can easily switch them to a Gmail- or Yahoo-like system, so you don't have to retrain your muscle memory either.

So what does it have that other services don't? Out of the box, Outlook can sync with your Facebook and Twitter accounts to grab contact into and photos, so everything's always up to date and you don't have to input it all yourself. The ads are also designed to be less creepy: when viewing a newsletter, it'll show you related ads and deals, but in personal conversations, it'll show you a summary of that person's contact info instead of an ad that's mining your data for profit. The inbox also has a very cool "Quick Actions" feature, that shows you actions like reply or delete when you hover over a message—and you can customize which actions show up (of course, keyboard shortcuts would still be faster).

Lastly, Outlook has a lot of features related to newsletters and other non-personal email. Newsletters are one of those things that can be great, but can also act as clutter. Outlook automatically labels all incoming newsletter-type messages, and even adds an unsubscribe button to the bottom even if the newsletter didn't include one itself. It will attempt to contact the sender of the newsletter and unsubscribe you, and if that doesn't work, it'll just block all future messages from them. You can also set up your inbox to only keep a certain number of new messages from one sender—or rather, automatically delete all newsletters except the newest one from a given sender. It's all really well thought out, and perfect for keeping up on those newsletters without creating extra inbox clutter.

Of course, it has a lot of other pretty great stuff too, like built-in Office viewers, photo slideshows, and more. Right now, Outlook is in preview, but anyone can sign up for access, so if you want to check it out, just hit the link below.